Kornel Esti

by Kosztolányi, Deszö

  Esti strolled homewards along Andrássy út. He had smoked thirty cigarettes that night and drunk nine espressos, and he was suffering from nicotine and caffeine poisoning. He was panting. He stopped again and again to lean on the walls of houses, felt his pulse at the radial bone in his right arm and at his neck. His weak heart was throbbing. He felt sick. He didn’t even care how he had come to this. Together with the nasty experience he had brought away a kind of warmth, an animal warmth and affection, of which it was pleasant to think—a man’s last love. He felt richer for having been selflessly loved by mistake for a couple of hours.

  He was no gloomier than at other times. There were still stars in the sky. A light breeze blew on the bridge, and in its deep bed the Danube rolled on irrevocably to the beat of continuity and passing. When he opened the door of his study, where through years of practice he could always be in readiness, he sat down mechanically at his desk, fished out a couple of sheets from the untidy heap of paper, and read them, so as to find the voice necessary to go on and put on paper the chapter of the novel which he had already drafted in his head. What he had seen and heard that night he put aside to mature, to be forgotten somewhat and then retrieved from his soul one day, when the time was right.

  The cab screeched through the night.

  The driver drove well in excess of the permitted speed, flat out, in hopes of a tip. At the rear of the car the little mauve lamp burned with an unnatural chemical light. In front the headlights cast a carpet of glittering rays on the dark surface of the road—the rubber tires were never to catch up with it. This carpet of rays appeared to change, sometimes seeming new at every moment, but sometimes it stood still, and it seemed that it was the old one and the same that the cab was carrying along and, as it never wore out, spreading it again and again before itself with lightning speed in its immaculate brightness.

  Pál sat on the back seat, watching this play of light and entertained by it. The sensation that he was gently rising and falling at sea came again, but this time much more strongly. He kept leaning out to look at his face in the mirror of the water, but the waves were now too high and he could see nothing.

  Gergely sat beside him. Skultéty was facing them on the little folding seat. They were thinking of how the two of them would deal with him. Pál, however, was quiet. He gave no more thought to the assurances by which he had been turned against the cruel psychiatrists. He licked his thin lips, fragrant with alcohol, and did not speak.

  Thus he quite faded into the background on that journey. In the gloom from time to time three heads moved: his own, Gergely’s, and Skultéty’s.

  They did not speak either. Gergely yawned.

  The car lurched on the uneven ground, gave a mighty blast on the horn, and stopped outside the gate of St. Miklós Hospital.

  There was no need to ring, the porter opened the gate at the sound of the horn.

  Gergely got out, Skultéty next. Finally Pál.

  He went over to the porter.

  “Who’s on duty?” he asked of ciously.

  “Dr. Wirth.”

  Pál stood erect. The wind blew at the unfastened wings of his splendid raincoat.

  When the others had joined him he said:

  “Give me a cigarette.”

  The flame of the lighter lit up his face. Now it was as calm and serious as ever in the past.

  “What’s the time?” he asked.

  “Quarter to three.”

  “Right, let’s go,” said he, and set off with resolute steps, with that air of being at home that journalists have in unfamiliar places.

  Gergely and Skultéty followed a yard behind him.

  On the first floor a lock creaked. A gray door opened on a long, narrow corridor lit by two dim electric lamps. At the door Pál stubbed out his cigarette and glanced back at his friends, but they were hanging back. Gergely was bending down as if tying a shoelace that had come undone. So he went inside by himself.

  The iron door clanged to behind him and the attendant turned the key.

  Gergely and Skultéty paused reflectively outside the door for a few seconds. Then they went back down the stairs and got into the cab, which had waited for them.

  They both had a sense of death, the common fate of us all, which, in whatever form it comes, is equally final and sooner or later gets the better of us. Gergely, who had witnessed many a shooting and hanging, coughed and muttered something that sounded like a curse. Skultéty had been laughing out loud and braying so much all evening that his ribs ached. They did not speak. Gergely sat on the padded seat, Skultéty on the folding seat. The place where Pál had sat remained vacant. There was an air of mourning in the car.

  Pál Mogyoróssy, staff reporter on the Közlöny, strode forth down the corridor, which was so long, so very long, that it seemed scarcely to end. A long way off , some hundred yards away, beneath the second electric light, a quite wretched little figure was waiting for him, puny, anemic, much smaller and weaker than Pál. Its ears were slightly projecting. A stethoscope peeped from its white coat. This was Dr. Wirth.

  When Pál reached the doctor he introduced himself, as usual on such occasions, both personally and on behalf of his paper, modestly, with dignity, as the representative of the public at large.

  “I’ve come for information,” said Pál. “We’ve been told, my dear doctor …” and he dried up.

  Wirth came to his aid:

  “What?”

  “That,” said Pál, “two mental patients have been beaten up here tonight.”

  “Here?” said Wirth, glancing at the floor. “No, indeed. Patients aren’t beaten up here. And in any case, we have no mental patients, only sufferers from nervous disorders, who are rather tired and are resting.”

  “But we have definite information, doctor.”

  “No, szerkestô úr,* it’ll be a mistake,” and he patted Pál on the shoulder with an almost impudent smile.

  The doctor took Pál by the arm, and they walked for a long time up and down the long, long corridor. On both sides were the wards, large open rooms lit by blue electric lamps like the taillight of the car. The patients, those who could, were sleeping, toying in their dreams with the trivia of their lives, putting them together and taking them apart, like other people. Many, however, could not sleep. One fat, unshaven man, who was in the third phase of encephalo-malacia, was sitting up in bed, his head hanging before him, pressing his blue striped hospital gown to his face.

  Pál inquired about their diagnoses and prospects of treatment, and Wirth chatted about politics and the police, about certain journalists of their mutual acquaintance too, and spoke with almost paternal good humor of syphilis. It was a friendly exchange of views, uninhibited and relaxed. Then without any transition the doctor asked for his pocket knife, which Pál actually handed over, and the doctor, without so much as thanking him for it, slipped it into the pocket of his white coat beside his stethoscope. He had by that time made a preliminary diagnosis. Detailed examination he postponed to the morning; it was getting late.

  Pál was still talking, chattering of this and that. Suddenly he stopped. It seemed to him that something was not quite right. A vague and superficial sense of uncertainty had come over him. It was just the sort of misgiving that comes to us all when we have been in the street for hours and feel uncomfortable because one strap of our suspenders, which normally press evenly on our collarbones, has slipped down. He had remembered Gergely and Skultéty.

  By then, however, Wirth had led Pál into a separate little room, the quietness and elegance of which he could not praise, as it was disagreeable, repugnant, and shabby, furnished with only a table covered by waxed cloth, a chair, a bed, a nightstand, and a radiator.

  The doctor sat down on the bed. He appealed to Pál to undress and get some sleep, and next day he would be able to go for a walk in the lovely garden.

  Pál wanted to protest in the name of the press against this infringement of his personal liberty, but couldn’t hear his own voice. He could
only hear his fury. His press cards. He, who had always been inside the cordon, at every suicide, every demonstration, every burial, inside the cordon. It was he, he.

  Wirth disappeared. Pál ran after him into the corridor, but he was not there either. He could only see an attendant, not the one who had opened the door but another, whom he did not recognize.

  He went back into the room. He looked through the barred window into the garden; on the weed-ridden lawn, surrounded by sumac trees, flowers of hemlock swayed, white, like scraps of writing paper. The electric light was still on, but even without it he could see. The sun, precise timepiece of the universe, in its relentless course was making its presence known below the horizon and whitening the sky. Dawn was breaking.

  Pál leaned on his elbows on the shoddy waxed cloth of the table. And he thought of Esti, Esti, who after correcting his dawn work, had pressed the switch on his electric lamp and was now standing in his bedroom in just his shirt, undressing, but could not sleep because he too was thinking of Pál.

  Pál pondered what he was to do. For the present, however, nothing came to mind.

  He just sat and wept.

  * Vérmezô, “Field of Blood,” is an open space of grass and trees adjoining the South station, to the west of Buda castle; it takes its name from its former use as a place of public executions. Gellérthegy is a hill on the Buda side of the Danube, commemorating the archbishop who led the conversion of the ancient Magyars to Chrisitanity.

  * A hill in Buda, to the north of Gellérthegy.

  * A type of pear, “emperor pear.”

  * “Mr. Editor,” an honorific for a “gentleman of the press.”

  * As before. Pál addresses the doctor as fôorvos, “principal doctor,” in similar style.

  IX

  In which he chats in Bulgarian with the Bulgarian train guard and experiences the sweet dismay of the linguistic chaos of Babel.

  “THERE’S SOMETHING I MUST TELL YOU ALL,” SAID KORNÉL Esti. “A little while ago someone said at a party that he would never travel to a country where he couldn’t speak the language. I said I saw his point. The main thing that interests me when I travel is people. Much more than objects in museums. If I can only hear what they say but not understand it, I feel as if I’m deaf or watching a silent film without music or subtitles. It’s irritating and boring.

  “After I’d said all that, it occurred to me that the opposite was just as valid, as is so often the case. It’s marvelous fun going around in a foreign country if voices are merely sounds which leave us cold and we stare blankly at everyone that speaks to us. What splendid isolation, my friends, what independence, what lack of responsibility. All of a sudden we feel like infants that need to be looked after. We start to display an inexplicable trust in adults wiser than ourselves. We let them speak and act on our behalf. Then we accept everything, unseen and unheard.

  ‘I’ve seldom had such an experience—as you know, I speak ten languages—in fact, it’s only come my way once, when I was en route for Turkey. I was passing through Bulgaria. I spent a total of twenty-four hours in the country, and that was all on the train. Something happened to me there that it would be a shame to keep quiet about.

  After all, I can die at any time, as I shall one day—a tiny vein in my heart or my brain will burst—and no one else, I’m sure, will ever have a similar experience.

  “So, it was at night. After midnight. The train was racing along through hills and villages that I didn’t know. It must have been nearly half past one. I couldn’t sleep. I went out into the corridor for a breath of air. I was soon bored. Black shapes were all that could be seen of the beauties of the countryside. It was quite an event if a point of light appeared. All the passengers around me were sleeping the sleep of the just. Not a soul was stirring in the carriages.

  “I was on the point of going back to my compartment when the guard appeared, lamp in hand. He was a Bulgarian, a stocky man with a black mustache, and he’d evidently finished his rounds. He’d seen my ticket some time previously, so he didn’t want anything from me. But by way of greeting, in friendly fashion, he shone his lamp and his eyes on me. Then he stopped beside me. Clearly, he was bored too.

  “I’ve no idea why or how, but I decided there and then, come what may, to have a conversation with him, and at length, meaningfully. I asked him in Bulgarian whether he smoked. That was all the Bulgarian I knew—and I’d picked that up on the train, from a sign. Apart from that I knew five or six words, the sort that stick to you when you’re traveling whether you like it or not, such as yes, no, and the like. But I swear to you, I didn’t know any more.

  “The guard raised his hand to the peak of his hat. I flicked open my cigarette case and of ered it to him. He took a gold-tipped cigarette with profound respect. He produced matches, lit one, and mumbled something to the effect of ‘here you are’ in his totally unfamiliar language. At that I held out to him the blue flame of my lighter and mouthed in imitation that word which I had heard for the first time in my life.

  “The two of us smoked, letting the smoke out through our nostrils. It was a definitely reassuring start. Even today I swell with pride to think of it, because it still flatters my self-esteem that I set that scene up with such understanding of people, that I showed such psychological insight in planting that tiny seed—which, as it transpired, branched out into a tree so great that beneath it I threw of the fatigue of my travels and at dawn was able to retire all the richer for some rare experiences.

  “You must recognize that from the very first moment my performance was confident and faultless. I had to convince the guard that I was a native Bulgarian, and that I knew Bulgarian at least as well as a lecturer in literature at Sofia University. Therefore I behaved a little stif y and pompously. Principally, I didn’t chatter. Actually, that wasn’t entirely my fault, but that makes no difference. It’s characteristic of foreigners always to try and speak the language of the country in which they’re traveling, they’re too enthusiastic about it, and in no time at all it emerges that they’re foreigners. Natives, on the other hand, those born there, will just nod and make themselves understood by signs. Words have to be dragged out of them. Even then, lethargically, they toss out weary words from the treasures of their mother tongue that lie dormant within them, words that have lost their shine with use. Generally they shy away from elegant turns of phrase and succinct literary constructions. As far as possible they don’t speak, which is wise, because if they had to give several hour-long lectures from a rostrum or write a hefty tome, both their students and their critics would be quick to point out—and not entirely without foundation—that they hadn’t even the first idea of their own native language.

  “And so the guard and I smoked on in that intimate silence from which great friendships, true understandings, and lifelong soul mates can arise. I was grave and courteous. From time to time I would crease my forehead, then—for variety—adopt a lighter appearance and glance at him quite attentively. Conversation, however, the entrancing possibility of which was now wafting in the air just above our heads, required me to start of somehow. I yawned and sighed, and then I put a hand on his shoulder and raised my eyebrows so that they formed huge question marks, tilted my head back and murmured ‘Well?’ The guard smiled; he must have discovered in this amicable form of interest some memory of childhood, or the behavior of a friend who inquired of him in this way, ‘How are things?’ He began to speak. He uttered four or five sentences. Then he fell silent and waited.

  “I too waited. I had good reason to. I was wondering what answer I should make. After a brief uncertainty I decided. I said ‘Yes.’

  “Experience has taught me that much. Whenever I’m not paying attention to the conversation or don’t understand something, I always say ‘Yes.’ This has never yet brought me any trouble. Not even when I’ve appeared to be approving something that I should have deplored. On occasion I can make people think that I’m speaking ironically. A Yes is very frequently a No.


  “That my reasoning was not unfounded was demonstrated brilliantly by the consequences. The guard became much more communicative. Unfortunately, he then fell silent once more and waited. This time I showed interest with a ‘Yes?’ in an interrogative tone, somewhat redolent of incomprehension and uncertainty. That—if I may so express myself—opened the floodgates. The guard opened up and spoke, spoke for about a quarter of an hour, pleasantly and clearly, on a variety of topics, during which time I didn’t have to consider what reply to make.

  “This was when I scored my first decisive success. From the way the words poured from his mouth, the way he chattered and jabbered on, it became clear that even in his dreams he would never imagine I was a foreigner. This belief, firm though it seemed, I had to support. If, for the time being, I evaded the obligation to respond, extremely painful for me as it was, and if I could constantly stuff gold-tipped cigarettes between my lips as if to indicate that my mouth was ‘occupied’ and not really capable of speaking, I nevertheless could not entirely neglect my self-sacrificing entertainer and from time to time had to give thought to fueling the conversation.

  “How did I manage that? Not with words. I put on an act, like an actor—a first-class actor—with all my might. My face, my hands, my ears, even my toes moved as required. But I had to beware of exaggeration. I mimed attentiveness, not that forced attentiveness which is suspect in advance, but that sort which is now lax and abstracted, now catches fire and flares up. I thought of something else as well. Sometimes I indicated by a gesture that I hadn’t understood what he’d said. You will naturally think that would be the easiest of things. Well, you’re wrong. That, my friends, was the hardest part. Just as I had not understood a single word of his ceaseless flow, I had to take care not to let my admission be too sincere and convincing. Nor did I miss my mark. The guard simply repeated his last sentence, and I nodded as if to say ‘Ah yes, that’s quite different.’